Beijing and Washington are tussling over US President Joe Biden’s upcoming Summit for Democracy, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees as a challenge to its authoritarian ways.
The party has said that China has its own form of democracy and plans to issue a report titled China: Democracy that Works today, five days before the opening of Biden’s two-day virtual meeting with about 110 other governments.
The White House on Thursday pushed back against Chinese criticism of the event, after a senior Chinese official said that it divides countries and points fingers at others.
Photo: AP
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the participants would discuss how to work together to stand up for democracy around the world.
“That’s nothing we’re going to apologize for,” Psaki said, responding to opening remarks by Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Yucheng (樂玉成) at an expert forum on democracy held by the Chinese government for journalists of foreign media outlets in Beijing.
“It claims it’s doing this for democracy,” Le said, without naming the US. “But this is in fact the very opposite of democracy. It will do no good to global solidarity, no good to cooperation and no good to development.”
Biden has made a competition between democracies and autocracies such as Russia and China a central theme of his presidency, saying that democracies must prove they can deliver.
Neither Russia nor China are invited to his summit.
Taiwan is to be represented by Minister Without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳) and Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴).
The CCP has responded to China’s exclusion by saying that its system serves the country’s people, citing its rapid development into a middle-income country and relative success in limiting the number of deaths from COVID-19.
Officials regularly highlight failings of US democracy, from gun violence to the insurrection at the US Capitol after the last presidential election.
German Marshall Fund of the US Asia Program director Bonnie Glaser, an expert on China, said that Beijing is correct in viewing the summit as a pushback against autocracy and China’s political system.
“The Chinese Communist Party likely feels threatened by the Biden democracy narrative and feels compelled to reaffirm that it puts the people first,” she said in an e-mail. “Of course, the people come after the party and the preservation of its role, but that is left unsaid.”
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